YouTube Announces Top 10 Videos of 2012

YouTube has just released their top 10 videos of 2012 along with one dazzling video bound to become a viral sensation in its own right.

Watch the clip to see the Rewind YouTube Style video featuring the website's biggest stars acting out a parody of Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe. The video was shot at the new YouTube Space in Los Angeles, a place for YouTube creators to come learn, collaborate, and create great content to put up on their YouTube channels.

Check out the list of 2012's greatest YouTube moments below:

1) PSY - Gangnam Style: The Korean pop music video that surprised the world is set to hit 1 billion views and has become the most viewed video of all time in just six months.

2) Walk off the Earth: This is the most-viewed cover song of 2012, attracting 140 million views this year.

3) KONY 2012: This video contained a call to action and collected 31 million views in a single day -- the most views ever for a YouTube video.

4) Call Me Maybe - Bieber, Gomez, Pena: This video, covering the song of the summer, kicked off a trend of lip sync videos that spanned from the Harvard baseball team and celebs to Olympians.

5) Epic Rap Battles - Obama vs. Romney: This episode featured well-known Obama impersonator Alphacat, and is one of the better known instances of the 2012 trend of Obama and Romney videos.

6) Dramatic Surprise: This video, featuring a mysterious sign in the middle of a Flemish square, brought in 25 million views in its first week.

7) Why You Asking All Them Questions: Comedian Emmanuel Hudson's popularity exploded this year partly from this video that garnered 39 million views -- almost half of which came from mobile devices.

8) Lindsey Stirling: Lindsey's trademark dubstep violin styles created a lot of buzz this year -- especially in the U.S., Germany and Poland. This video, which was shot by Lindsey's fellow YouTube creator Devin Graham, has over 500,000 likes and 100,000 comments.

9) Facebook Parenting: This video taught us not to mess with Dad. Bringing in 11 million views in one day, this video was the catalyst for an international discussion about parenting and Facebook.

10) Stratos Highlights: This live stream of Felix Baumgartner's free-fall from 128,000 feet shattered previous live stream records with 8 million concurrent views.

Visit youtube.com/rewind for more.

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NBC man MIA

Richard Engel, NBC’s award-winning chief foreign correspondent, has been missing in war-torn Syria since last week, Turkish media reported yesterday.

A Turkish journalist working with Engel, Aziz Akyavas, also is missing. The pair has not been in contact with NBC since Thursday, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.

Engel, 39, is fluent in Arabic and covered Iraq during the country’s last two wars and served as NBC’s Mideast bureau chief before he was promoted to top foreign correspondent.

NBC has not confirmed Engel’s disappearance, but the Turkish news report quickly went viral on social media.

RICHARD ENGEL

Engel’s NBC colleague David Schuster tweeted, “Original report from Turkish media . . . Praying it is wrong.”

In his latest report, which aired on NBC’s “Nightly News” last week, Engel interviewed rebel fighters in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and said President Bashar al-Assad’s regime appeared to be doomed.

Engel also described the city’s massive war damage, power outages and the food and health-care shortages that residents are enduring.

Engel, a Peabody Award winner, had previously reported on the Libyan civil war, the revolt that overthrew Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and other events of the Arab Spring.

Western news organizations did not report the kidnapping of New York Times reporter David Rohde in Afghanistan in 2008. His plight was disclosed only after he and an associate, who was also abducted by the Taliban, managed to escape after eight months.

Syria has been especially dangerous for foreign journalists, and several have been held captive, wounded or even killed since the civil war erupted there in early 2011.

American Marie Colvin, a correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Times who was originally from Oyster Bay, LI, was killed along with a French photographer in a February shelling attack in the central city of Homs.

More than 40,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad’s government began, according to the United Nations.

With

andy.soltis@nypost.com

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Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events

Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during this packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.

The events, all part of the first Innovate MIA week, also put the spotlight on Miami as it continues to try to develop into a technology hub for the Americas.

“While I like art, I absolutely love what is happening today... The time has come to become a tech hub in Miami,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, who kicked off the venture capital conference on Thursday. He told the audience of 450 investors and entrepreneurs about the county’s $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator in downtown Miami.

“I have no doubt that this gathering today will produce new ideas and new business ventures that will put our community on a fast track to becoming a center for innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship,” Gimenez said.

Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and a founder of TechStars, cautioned that won’t happen overnight. Building a startup community can take five, 10, even 15 years, and those leading the effort, who should be entrepreneurs themselves, need to take the long-term view, he told the audience via video. “You can create very powerful entrepreneurial ecosystems in any city... I’ve spent some time in Miami, I think you are off to a great start.”

Throughout the two-day AVCC at the JW Brickell Marriott, as well as the Endeavor and Wayra events, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their companies, hoping to persuade investors to part with some of their green.

And in some cases, the entrepreneurs could win money, too. During the venture capital conference, 29 companies —including eight from South Florida such as itMD, which connects doctors, patients and imaging facilities to facilitate easy access of records — competed for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes through short “elevator’’ pitches. Each took questions from the judges, then demoed their products or services in the conference “Hot Zone,” a room adjoining the ballroom. Some companies like oLyfe, a platform to organize what people share online, are hoping to raise funds for expansion into Latin America. Others like Ideame, a trilingual crowdfunding platform, were laser focused on pan-Latin American opportunities.

Winning the grand prize of $15,000 in cash and art was Trapezoid Digital Security of Miami, which provides hardware-based security solutions for enterprise and cloud environments. Fotopigeon of Tampa, a photo-sharing and printing service targeting the military and prison niches, scored two prizes.

The conference offered opportunities to hear formal presentations on current trends — among them the surge of start-ups in Brazil; the importance of mobile apps and overheated company valuations — and informal opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs.

Speakers included Gaston Legorburu of SapientNitro, Albert Santalo of CareCloud and Juan Diego Calle of .Co Internet, all South Florida entrepreneurs. Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center, which produced the conference with a host of sponsors, said the organizers worked hard to make the conference relevant to both the local and Latin American audience, with panels on funding and recruiting for startups, for instance.

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Sperm whale dies off Pompano Beach coast

The carcass of a 40-foot sperm whale that apparently died as it neared the shore off of Pompano Beach on Sunday afternoon later drifted back out to sea, ending a drama that had drawn the attention of beachgoers and scientists alike.

The whale was spotted about noon offshore near the 600 block of North Ocean Boulevard, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

Read the full story at Sun-Sentinel.com.

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Mother devoted her life to him – then he ended it

Nancy Lanza doted on her son — and he repaid her by fatally blasting her four times in the head and killing 26 others with a gun she taught him to use.

In the weeks leading up to Adam Lanza’s rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, his mom was focused on helping the troubled but brilliant 20-year-old build a life for himself. He was mulling a move to a new town for college — and she was ready to go with him, her friends told The Post.

“She doted on that child. She loved him more than anything. Nancy’s life revolved around him,” said Russ Hanoman, who knew Nancy for seven years and had spent time with Adam.

Rex / Rex USA

BETRAYED: Nancy Lanza, mother of the gunman, had “loved him more than anything,” a friend says.

Nancy, 52, was dedicated to her youngest son — described as “a near-genius” who suffered from the autism-related Asperger’s syndrome — and she had spent months going over his options for engineering schools, Hanoman said.

“They had recently gone to many different colleges looking for the right program for Adam, and the right living situation,” he said.

“He wanted to study engineering. Nancy was going to move wherever he was going to go. Not to live with him but to live near him.

“They were looking at schools in Seattle and one of the Carolinas. “It was his goal to be independent.”

Another friend, Rich Collins, said Nancy had a hard time dealing with her son’s difficulties — especially his inability to express love.

“She would get very upset that he wouldn’t let her hug him,” said Collins, who himself has a son with autism and would often commiserate with Nancy when the two would meet at a local bar.

“She was proud of the boys, but she would get upset about Adam not being affectionate,” he said.

Nancy would take Adam to a nearby shooting range to try to forge a bond with him, he said.

“This was something she could do to connect with her son, who couldn’t show emotions toward her,” Collins, 54, told The Post.

But that gun training turned deadly Friday, when Lanza shot his mother multiple times as she lay in her bed in their $1.6 million Newtown, Conn., home.

Sources said Nancy was shot in the head four times at close range, leaving her nearly unrecognizable. She was wearing her pajamas when she was slain, The Washington Post reported.

Adam — who had learned to drive only last summer — then took her black Honda to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary, where he unleashed the slaughter, opening fire in two classrooms and gunning down 20 first-graders and six educators before blowing his brains out with a single shot to the head.

Adam had attended Sandy Hook as a child, then the St. Rose of Lima Church’s Catholic school. He was later home-schooled and graduated from the local high school early, Nancy’s friends said.

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Five years after the recession, a slow recovery plods on

Five years ago this month, the Great Recession began. Which leads to this question: How much longer until South Florida can erase the damage?

Officially, the recession ended in June 2009. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the national economy began contracting in December 2007 and did not grow again for 19 months. Using taxable sales figures, it’s probably safe to say South Florida experienced a longer downturn. Overall spending contracted for the first time in South Florida in March 2007 and didn’t post a year-over-year gain until February 2010.

“Miami was at the forefront of the housing boom and bust,’’ said Karl Kuykendall, an economist who follows South Florida for IHS Global Insight. “It’s no surprise Miami was early into the recession and somewhat late coming out.”

But whatever the actual duration of the downturn, it doesn’t take much math to realize the economy still feels shaky. South Florida lost its first net job in more than two years in October, when a tiny decline of 300 payroll slots interrupted 26 months of consistent expansion. The upcoming November report out Friday will show whether the losing streak continues.

And while unemployment is off near-record highs set in April 2010, more than 180,000 South Floridians were listed as officially out of work in the last count. That’s almost 90 percent more than the 98,000 people listed as out of work in the first month of the recession.

Tourism posted an early recovery, particularly in Miami-Dade, where foreign visitors helped hotels shake-off a sharp drop in U.S. vacationers and business travelers. But the recession lingers in Broward’s tourism industry, which is just now retiring past records.

Housing suffered the most dramatic crash throughout the recession and was also the last of the major indicators to begin its recovery. The Case-Shiller real estate index pegs May 2006 as the peak of the bubble in South Florida. Although each neighborhood is different, the average South Florida house worth $200,000 that month would have fallen down to $97,600 by the time the market hit bottom just over a year ago, in November 2011.

Values have recovered 9 percent since then, meaning the same house should be worth just over $105,0000. That’s a loss of 47 percent over six years.

Recovering from that kind of crash takes time, and five years clearly isn’t enough. To give a hint of the progress underway, Business Monday checked into businesses and residents on the frontlines of the recovery. The reports follow:

Housing

After fending off a foreclosure and battling to get out from under an onerous option ARM mortgage, Marie and Wilson Destin recently worked out a loan modification on their 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house near Miami Lakes.

With the help of Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida, a nonprofit agency that helps people navigate the Byzantine home financing landscape, the Destins cut their monthly mortgage payment to $1,500 from $1,900 under a new fixed-rate loan.

In 2006, when the housing market was booming, the Haitian-American couple had taken out an option ARM loan on the property, which they had owned for several years.

“Somebody came to the house and approached me with an option ARM loan,’’ said Wilson Destin. “They said I would pay less.’’

The option ARM — which has triggered financial woes for thousands of homeowners during the downturn — allowed for flexible payments and negative amortization, practically encouraging people to defer payments.

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7-year-old in critical condition after accident

Police were investigating an accident involving a 7-year-old who was struck by a vehicle in a Lauderhill neighborhood late Saturday, Lauderhill Police spokesman Rick Rocco said.

The vehicle and its driver, who has not yet been identified, remained on scene after the incident near the intersection of Northwest 27th Court and 56th Avenue.

The child was transported to Broward Health Medical Center in critical condition immediately after the incident, police said.

Details of the accident were not immediately available.

This post will be updated as we receive more information.

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Riveting Details Emerge from CT School Rampage

As morning turned to afternoon on Friday, further details continued to emerge from Newtown, CT, a tight-knit community shaken by a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that took the lives of innocent students and teachers, in addition to the gunman, reportedly identified as Adam Lanza.

RELATED: President Fights Tears as He Addresses Nation

As President Barack Obama touched on in his tear-jerking press conference, this is not the first time the nation has witnessed a tragedy of this kind. The recent mass shooting at an Aurora, CO movie theater is just one instance of such violence. Columbine High School and Virginia Tech also resonate as prime examples.

Hollywood's biggest stars were quick to react to the news on Twitter and made an outcry for stricter gun control regulations.

Watch the video for ET's complete coverage of today's biggest headline.

RELATED: Celebs Tweet Reactions to CT School Shooting

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Hasid détente in Gropez ruin

The downfall of Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez could yield a political détente in the fierce war that has been raging for years among the Satmar Hasidim in Brooklyn.

The once tight-knit community has been bitterly split since the death of Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum in 2006 left two sons, Aaron and Zalman, in a blood feud over succession rights.

Lopez, the borough’s Democratic Party boss, long ago formed an alliance with the larger Zalman-led faction, which controls a huge social-services apparatus in Williamsburg.

When the “Zalies” needed government help, especially on housing issues, he was there as chairman of the Assembly Housing Committee.

VITO LOPEZ Favored Zalman faction.

When Lopez needed their 6,000 to 7,000 votes at election time, they dutifully marched in lock step to the polls.

Any friend of the Zalies was an enemy of the Aaronites, who control about 3,000 to 4,000 votes.

That made for high drama in some hard-fought elections. But it also diluted the political strength of each side.

With Lopez facing sexual-harassment charges and stripped of many of his powers, some political observers see an opening for a possible political rapprochement.

“We have never been in this situation before,” observed political consultant Michael Tobman. “Vito’s absence, combined with open countywide and citywide races where 10,000 Brooklyn votes can make a very real difference, makes a compelling case.”

Former City Councilman Ken Fisher said common sense would dictate an end to the hostilities.

“When the community was united and elected officials knew they could deliver a bloc of 10,000 votes or more, the door to the statehouse and City Hall was open to them,” said Fisher.

“When it’s net a couple of thousand votes for one side or the other and it means getting involved in controversy for those votes, it’s a less effective proposition for candidates.”

Officials who’ve had to deal with the opposing sides for years remain skeptical.

“I don’t see any evidence of this happening,” said one elected official.

But Rabbi David Niederman, who oversees the huge social-services network run by the Zalies, said practicality has always been at the heart of the community’s relationship with politicians who come looking for endorsements.

“We don’t work on political decisions,” he said. “We work on meat and potatoes.”

Niederman also disputed the notion that Lopez — his longtime ally — was a factor.

“Vito, what does he have to do with the two sides?” he asked.

david.seifman@nypost.com

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Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events

Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during this packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.

The events, all part of the first Innovate MIA week, also put the spotlight on Miami as it continues to try to develop into a technology hub for the Americas.

“While I like art, I absolutely love what is happening today... The time has come to become a tech hub in Miami,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, who kicked off the venture capital conference on Thursday. He told the audience of 450 investors and entrepreneurs about the county’s $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator in downtown Miami.

“I have no doubt that this gathering today will produce new ideas and new business ventures that will put our community on a fast track to becoming a center for innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship,” Gimenez said.

Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and a founder of TechStars, cautioned that won’t happen overnight. Building a startup community can take five, 10, even 15 years, and those leading the effort, who should be entrepreneurs themselves, need to take the long-term view, he told the audience via video. “You can create very powerful entrepreneurial ecosystems in any city... I’ve spent some time in Miami, I think you are off to a great start.”

Throughout the two-day AVCC at the JW Brickell Marriott, as well as the Endeavor and Wayra events, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their companies, hoping to persuade investors to part with some of their green.

And in some cases, the entrepreneurs could win money, too. During the venture capital conference, 29 companies —including eight from South Florida such as itMD, which connects doctors, patients and imaging facilities to facilitate easy access of records — competed for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes through short “elevator’’ pitches. Each took questions from the judges, then demoed their products or services in the conference “Hot Zone,” a room adjoining the ballroom. Some companies like oLyfe, a platform to organize what people share online, are hoping to raise funds for expansion into Latin America. Others like Ideame, a trilingual crowdfunding platform, were laser focused on pan-Latin American opportunities.

Winning the grand prize of $15,000 in cash and art was Trapezoid Digital Security of Miami, which provides hardware-based security solutions for enterprise and cloud environments. Fotopigeon of Tampa, a photo-sharing and printing service targeting the military and prison niches, scored two prizes.

The conference offered opportunities to hear formal presentations on current trends — among them the surge of start-ups in Brazil; the importance of mobile apps and overheated company valuations — and informal opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs.

Speakers included Gaston Legorburu of SapientNitro, Albert Santalo of CareCloud and Juan Diego Calle of .Co Internet, all South Florida entrepreneurs. Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center, which produced the conference with a host of sponsors, said the organizers worked hard to make the conference relevant to both the local and Latin American audience, with panels on funding and recruiting for startups, for instance.

Read More..